Sometimes you just gotta get away, you know? You gotta exit stage left in the interest of preserving your sanity (and maybe preventing the possibility of you being the cause of those around you winding up on a gurney?). So you hop on a plane, get in a car, get on a bus, take a walk down the street - whatever it takes - and you get outta Dodge.
I hopped in a car over the weekend and drove a few hours north to a new favorite hiding place of mine on the shores of Lake Erie. I spent the time generally trying to disappear for awhile and just check out of life. If you caught the last post then you know that my job has been - how shall we say? - a bit of a pest here lately. It's way more stressful than it should be. I do not work in an emergency room, I am not curing cancer, nor I am a brain surgeon, but some days you wouldn't know it based on my stress level. I think I am going to write a note to self on my dry erase board behind my desk at work, "THIS IS NOT THE ER AND NO ONE IS DYING OF A GUNSHOT WOUND HERE, PEOPLE." That's not to say that the work I do isn't valuable and doesn't have a strong sense of purpose, but good heavens, do I lose perspective. And so do a few of my co-workers. Hamsters on treadmills most days. Maybe I should take comfort in the fact that I'm not the only one losing her mind. I had one co-worker who got out of her car this morning - left the keys in it. With the engine still running. She didn't even know she'd done it until I got to work 30 minutes after her and inquired about it. Heaven help us keep our heads screwed on straight.
You know when you leave your keys in the car with the engine still running it's time to call a time-out. I didn't leave my engine running, but I sure did need to call a time-out.
And I'm so glad I did. The weekend could not have been more picturesque. Blue skies for miles. Sun beating down (my first legitimate sunburn of the summer, albeit a couple of months late). Water lapping on the shores. Subdued. Quiet. Removed. Solitary. My safe haven.
I stayed at an old Victorian guest house. They didn't even bother to give me a key to my room, life is so laid-back there. (Maybe I should have been more concerned about this fact that I didn't get a key?) I locked my bike up at one point, even though I had noted that no one else had bothered to lock theirs up. I was paranoid, so I locked it up anyway. Later on I got a very serious stink eye from a maintenance man as he was dragging both the rack and my bike down the street, as he attempted to move the rack out of the way. I felt so scolded by that singular look (he never actually opened his mouth - the look was sufficient) that I didn't bother to lock my bike up the rest of the weekend.
I ate way too much junk food - between Hawaiian pizza, chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cones, french fries, strawberry smoothies, and cinnamon donuts, I was beyond stuffed by the time my departure rolled around. I spent way too much money to park and take a ferry over to Kelley's Island. All in the pursuit of a smashed penny. I think this penny made number 116 in the collection.
As I sat watching the sun sink below the water line Friday night, I kept having this recurring thought sweep through my spirit. And I couldn't escape it. When I went to dinner Saturday night, I sat there at the diner in a corner booth all alone, people-watching, mulling over a variety of thoughts, enjoying my pizza, when I knew I had to write the thought down before it escaped my brain altogether. All I could find was an old receipt from who knows what. So I turned it over and jotted down this:
Sometimes life is less about escaping the mess, as much as it is about learning to live in the midst of the mess.
Yes, sometimes life means getting out of Dodge. Yes, sometimes life means hopping on a ferry and standing on the deck, letting the wind blow away the worries. Yes, sometimes life means stopping at the roadside fruit stand and getting fresh peaches and strawberries. Yes, sometimes life means finding a deck chair, propping your feet up and getting lost in a good book. Yes, sometimes life really is about escaping.
And other times it means opening your car door. Putting the keys in the ignition. And deliberately choosing to drive back to the life that seems to be a mess at times. And realizing you don't get to exit. You don't get to just pack up and leave just because you don't feel like dealing with life anymore. You don't get to just walk out of the room and not have the hard conversations.
Life is about learning to live in the midst of that mess. It's about learning to live in the midst of crying children, piles of laundry, unpaid bills, death, dysfunction, heartbreak, and chaos. It's about all those things, both monumental and trivial. Because what we'll find is that if we don't keep choosing to lean in, to draw close to the very things that threaten to do us in, we'll never find that on the other side of those things are even sweeter moments of victory.
So we keep leaning in. We keep pressing on. We keep deliberately choosing to get out of bed. We keep choosing to see a God who is far bigger than whatever problems we might have. We switch out our magnifying glasses for some binoculars, fixing our gaze on the distant horizon line instead of the end of our noses, and we keep learning to live in the midst of the mess.
Because that in reality is the only true escape, the only way out.
